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DATABASE: Spiders Crawl Onto the Web

Arachnologist David Shorthouse of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, has found a fitting location for the server that houses his Nearctic Spider Database: the basement of his house. Visitors who scuttle over to this new clearinghouse can snare taxonomic and natural history data for about 350 of the roughly 3800 North American species, such as the ground-hunting wolf spider (Pardosa xerampelina). The accounts, provided by Shorthouse and other researchers, weave in information such as the creatures' distribution, habitat, anatomy, and diet. Shorthouse encourages other experts to add their data to the growing site.